A 12-foot-long picnic basket blocks the road ahead of us, a towering bottle of cabernet jutting from the top and ants the size of kindergartners scaling the wicker sides. As the basket sits in traffic, a herd of human giraffes—spotted tights, papier-mâché heads—sweeps by. Then from behind comes the sound of clanking metal. I turn around to confront a silver sea monster on wheels. Front-mounted lobster claws chomp hungrily, dragon jaws on the roof open wide, and a long tongue of flame scorches the sky.

Such are the sights of the Kinetic Grand Championship, a three-day event on the northern California coast that is equal parts inventors' showcase, artistic performance, and serious race. It's the Daytona 500 meets Burning Man. Using no motors, the picnic basket, the sea monster, and three dozen other human-powered absurdities will travel 42 miles between the cities of Arcata, Eureka, and Ferndale. Though they look like carnival floats on acid, the contraptions must be designed to drive over pavement, dirt, and sand dunes, and even to navigate moving waters. "Kinetics is about art, speed, and engineering," says Monica Topping, former president of the organization that puts on the race. "It's the triathlon of the art world."

There are nearly a dozen kinetic races around the United States, from Port Townsend, Wash., to Baltimore, and all were inspired by the Humboldt County event. It was launched in 1969 by local artists Hobart Brown and Jack Mays and first won by a turtle that belched smoke and laid eggs. The event begins at Arcata's main square, where thousands of spectators snap pictures and a marching band plays hits from the 1980s. A slice of cake creeps past a pod of dolphins. A gangster's getaway car moves beside the space shuttle Endeavour. The Heroes of Gloryopolis rolls slowly along with a team of Marvel Comics—esque superheroes patrolling a metropolitan skyline. Ten pilots below pedal bikes welded to the remains of a Ford Ranger chassis. The machine was engineered by resident Carl Mueller, who, like many kinetic racers, has an almost compulsive desire to tinker with everything from Legos to vintage steam locomotives. "I was born with a wrench in one hand and a gear in the other," he says.

Mark Peterson

On day two, Visualize Whirled Peas begins to traverse Humboldt Bay with the writer as a co-pilot. (Photo by Mark Peterson)

And then there's the kinetic sculpture that I'm helping to race. I hunker down in a putrid-green, three-wheeled dune buggy called Visualize Whirled Peas, or VWP for short. Decorated with dangling tennis balls and spinning pinwheels, it has one tire up front and two in the back, and there's a similar configuration of seats for the trio of pilots. To my right is VWP's inventor, Mike Ransom, who built the contraption from donated dirt-track tires, abandoned bikes, and other dumpster-diving finds. Whether they are anticar environmentalists or monster-truck fans, most racers, like Ransom, relish the challenge of turning trash into rolling treasure.

"How many bikes died to make that float?" a man on the street asks.

"Probably about six or seven," Ransom says. Each VWP pilot has pedals underfoot and controls a set of either 18 or 21 bicycle gears, which in turn feed into six more gearing ranges. Ransom, a computer programmer at the University of California, Davis, boasts that VWP has 244,944 possible gearing combinations. "Rube Goldberg would be proud!" the man replies.

A Kinetic Kop, wearing the buttoned coat and tall hat of a 19th-century British police officer, approaches VWP. He checks that we have the toothbrushes, the horn, the 2-gallon pail, and other items mandated by the gleefully arcane rules of the contest. The inspection ends, and at noon, a siren cuts through the air. Pedaling furiously and jockeying for position, Team VWP makes three laps around the square, then heads west out of town. The race is on.

Okay, be a buzzkill. Ask why. Why would people spend hundreds of hours to create all-terrain racing sculptures? The obvious answer is because kinetic racing is fun, but the rationale goes deeper than that. Events like the Kinetic Grand Championship attract both studio artists and grease-stained engineers with the same intoxicating lure: an oddball challenge whose arbitrary constraints inspire wonderfully unconventional solutions. The mandate that all entries be human-powered makes the race more accessible to students and hobbyists. And the no-engines rule gives the race a third component besides artistic design and mechanical engineering—human sweat. "I've always loved the physical, athletic part of the race," says racer Duane Flatmo, a 30-time participant.

This year Flatmo rides in Bottom Feeders, the fire-breathing sea monster he created. An artist who is as comfortable with paint on canvas as he is with taking a blowtorch to steel, Flatmo has competed on the TV show Junkyard Wars and performed a musical number—playing a flamenco guitar with an electric eggbeater to strum the strings—on America's Got Talent. He built Bottom Feeders with a dazzling array of recycled materials, from cupcake tins and colanders to irrigation equipment and pieces of airplane wings. "I try to create a piece of eye candy, something that people just can't help but get out their camera and take a picture of," Flatmo says.

Bottom Feeders falls behind VWP as we pedal out of town into an agrarian landscape. Cows cluster against fences that line the two-lane road and stare at the sculptures passing by. Cruising atop oversize tires, VWP passes a rickety white taco truck. Papier-mâché skeletons, one dressed as a bride and the other as a groom, sit in the front seats and grin toothily. NEWLYDEADS, reads the sign over their heads.

A couple of hours later, after driving down a long stretch of beach with waves sliding up beneath the tires, we turn inland and face a steep set of dunes. VWP makes it up the first one but stalls midway up the second. No matter how much we strain against the pedals, the machine won't move forward. The front wheel starts lifting up off the steep slope, and the whole contraption tilts dangerously backward. "Okay, that's it!" Ransom calls, signaling for everyone to jump off. "We're pushing." After we reboard at the top of the hill, which is called Dead Man's Drop, a judge asks if we want to scout the steep descent on foot. "Nope, we'll be fine," Ransom replies as we wheel over the sandy lip. And he's right.

Mark Peterson

Before they become Grand Champions, ACE medalists, and Pageantry winners, the Tempus Fugitives—headed up by James Smith—enjoy a smooth section of road on their way to victory. It is Smith's third time racing in this machine. (Photo by Mark Peterson)

The next day opens with a 1-mile sojourn through Humboldt Bay. The Jeep, a black, 1½-ton monster truck with four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering, loses a pontoon 50 yards in and begins to capsize, causing at least one co-pilot to jump overboard, screaming. The Jeep was overbuilt by design, says its maker, Chris Gardner. "I looked at all the other sculptures and they're awesome pieces of engineering, light, and little, but they're not rock crawlers," the 21-year-old says. "I wanted to build a tank."

I'm not comforted by his accident, nor by the conversation I had the day before with Dave Richards, a judge who was inspecting VWP. "You'd tell us if this thing was going to fall apart, right?" I asked.

"Oh, heck no," he said. "We hope for sinkers." But VWP crosses flawlessly. Styrofoam pontoons on each side of the craft keep us afloat. Paddle blades made from cut-up paint buckets and temporarily mounted on the wheels supply the propulsion.

Ransom is upset that VWP didn't do better on the climb up Dead Man's Drop, but is excited at how well we handled the water crossing. The strength of his reactions is a revelation: The inventors behind this rolling circus take their contraptions seriously. It isn't that most participants are out to be the fastest on the course—one of the most coveted prizes is the Medio-CAR Award, given to the team that finishes exactly in the middle. Instead, artistic flair and engineering ingenuity are what's valued. The race is not about who can get to Ferndale first, but who can get there best.

Late in the race, VWP pulls abreast of Bottom Feeders on a long hill. I look over at Flatmo; he looks over at me. We point at each other in mock menace, then both start pedaling madly. Dune buggy and sea monster trade leads for 30 yards, but then the sound of a popping chain comes from Bottom Feeders. They pull over for a quick repair as we laugh and continue on.

We reach the top of Loleta Hill, which punishes racers with 1 mile of 7 percent grade, and dismount to catch our breath. In the end, Team VWP will finish in the middle—not fast enough to win a top prize, nor average enough for the Medio-CAR Award. But Ransom is happy simply because his machine has held together. "Blood, sweat, and gears," he says to nobody in particular, and hops back aboard.

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